Recitatif

The only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote. She described it as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” It's an ingenious little puzzle of a story about two young girls named Twyla and Roberta; one is black and the other white. They meet in a shelter when they are eight years old, wards of the state because one mother "danced all night" and the other mother was sick. They became fast friends during the four months they lived there and their paths intermittently cross during the following decades. Morrison never answers the question she poses, leaving it to the reader to decide which is black and which is white. A book club could wrestle with the story forever. My bound version contains a wonderful introduction by Zadie Smith, but because the essay gives an awful lot away I urge you to read the story first. 83 pages, though the story itself is only 40.